goodwoodglobes
Beautiful, tactile, custom wooden globes
For years, I've been battling insurance brokers to find business insurance and even home insurance that allowed me to carve maps and globes in my basement.
In the end, it was costing me many thousands of dollars a year in additional insurance costs to keep goodwoodglobes alive. That's more than I can possibly make from a small craft business.
I find it depressing that it's not possible to stay small with a business like this.
In the end I had to heed what the world was telling me. It doesn't want wood-carved maps and globes from me. It wants software.
I posted a photo of my larger wood-carved globe on Reddit.
Received 23,000 upvotes, 600 comments and made it into the top 25 posts in r/all.
I received over 40 inquiries about wood-carved maps and globes, which I expect will convert at about 25%, so maybe 10 orders, which'll keep me going for a while!
Free leads from Reddit beats paid advertising elsewhere.
Three problems with my wood-carved maps & globes side project right now:
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There is no wood to carve! Money can't buy 2" thick maple where I live... and I can't carve maps or globes without it.
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USGS changed its map data format... again! It's going to take software changes to handle the new, over-complicated format.
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My wood-carving machine is down. Several errors appear when I try to start it up. I'm working on a repair, but no luck so far.
As I've said before: physical products are hard… I'm going back to software!
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Cool product! No idea about the custom software you built for this, but I think it is really cool you built that
I noticed the line between the two wooden hemispheres in one of the pictures. I wonder if the whole thing can be made on a single piece* of wood?
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Good question. The globe could be made of one piece of wood if I had a 5-axis CNC router, which would allow the piece to be rotated to any angle to be carved away.
Unfortunately, I only have a 3-axis CNC router (the 5-axis ones are way too expensive for me!) so the carving can only be down from one direction, making splitting the globe into pieces the only way to get the 360 degree relief.
Thanks!
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I guess you can try to flip the block so it does the work on one half, then the work again on another half? I guess the challenge would be to be exact about the positioning
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That wouldn't quite work: think about the bits around the edges, where the router bit wouldn't be able to carve the mountains, because it's tangential to the surface of the globe.
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My first 9" wood-carved globe was delivered to a backer in California this week, two years after I launched my crowdfunding campaign!
I always knew the promise of a physical product that I hadn't yet created was going to be hard to fulfill, but in the end it took twice as long as I'd imagined, two years instead of one.
Physical products are hard… I'm going back to software!
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the globes look good though :) good work. Are they manually done? Could it work if you 3D-printed them? or sold the 3D plans? I don't know much about the space, these might be stupid questions.
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Thanks Fernando! These are good questions. They’re not manual, but not 3D printed; rather, they’re robotically carved using a CNC router. That has the advantage over 3D printing that they’re made of solid wood, which makes them much more beautiful, I think, than anything made from 3D printed materials. There’s much manual work to be done to assemble and finish the globes after the pieces come out of the CNC router, so it might be hard to sell the plans. Good thinking, though!
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As someone currently building a robotics company I feel you on this one. Everything is 100x harder and its not worth it if you don't absolutely believe your product will have a huge impart on the world and you love the day to day work. You seem to have gotten fairly lucky with just static wood. Try hardware that is "alive" that comes with problems in every area from hardware all the way up the stack to software ;), where screw ups turn your creation into a lump of hardware on the ground. Congrats on delivering to the backers though, so many of those never come to fruition.
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I went through Kickstarter with my previous company. We used the Onion Omega to control our PCBs and it was still mega hard (had to have other custom internals and shell etc though).
Also, the margins in software are a lot better. So, yeah like you said, you need a lot of conviction for the project. -
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Yes, absolutely: I get to use someone else's production-ready robot to make my globes. You have my sympathy building your own robots: hardware is really, really hard. You're right, it's the impact - creating something of value in the world - that makes it all worthwhile. Thanks for the support, and good luck with your robotics!
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Good luck sir!
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Thanks Chris!
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing your story. It would be great to hear more about the tribulations you went through. I bet you have some good lessons for all of us.
All the best,
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Thanks John! I'll keep you updated!
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I've heard that getting backlinks from other websites with authority is the way to build SEO, but, well, I'm not very good at asking people to add links from their websites to mine.
I've also heard the opposite, that Google doesn't care so much about backlinks these days, they're so good at analyzing the quality of your content that that's all that matters these days.
So I set about creating some quality content on my website, a guide to the best globes money can buy: https://goodwoodglobes.com/guide/
And it seems to be working. A search on "globe buying guide" now has my website showing up #4 in the rankings. Since I'm selling globes, that makes me happy!
Here's how I did it... without any backlinks to speak of:
- content that's genuinely useful (why bother trying to trick Google's bots into thinking that the content is useful for humans when you could just make it genuinely useful?)
- content that's pretty (it has been a huge task to get permission to reproduce images from each of the globemakers I link to, but most of them are grateful for the links!)
- content that's generous (other globemakers' "globe guides" include only their own globes, whereas I'm happy to include the best globes in the world no matter who makes them)
- content that I love (I really like globes, and it has been a true pleasure connecting with other globemakers to put together my guide)
Do you have any SEO tips that go against the conventional wisdom?
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Good job! But keep in mind that Google does care about links. Even if that specific article hasn’t any, your website has 51 backlinks. This means that you have a sufficient domain authority to rank for a very limited number of low competition keywords.
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@markjeffery how many pageviews monthly now?
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Well, this is embarrassing, but I don't actually track page views. Here's why:
- I've spent a lot of time in my day job complying with GDPR and other proliferations of pointlessly specific privacy regulation, and it doesn't seem worth the effort; by not tracking, I know I'm in compliance;
- when I've tracked page views on my other web sites, it has made me happy when it goes up, but it has never changed what I've done, i.e. the information has never been actionable;
- ruthless prioritization of other things!
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@markjeffery we're working on GDPR compliant and privacy friendly visitors' tracking solution
DISCLOSURE: yes, this is my project. It isn't free but I have perks for fellow-indie hackers, — use this link to get $50 off second purchase-
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Good to know, thanks!
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Another option you could use is Google Search Console. It does not track the users beyond the country, device and search term. And that happens on Google's search page. No tracking happens on your website.
Through this you can get the search terms, number of people who saw, number of people who clicked, the position on the search page etc.
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Awesome, thank you, I will take a look!
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you can use simple analytics - it's gdpr compliant as they don't track
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Yes, I really like the Simple Analytics approach. Long term I'd like to replace Google Analytics with Simple Analytics or something similar on all my web sites. Thanks!
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Hi Mark,
Judging your SEO effort by looking at your ranking in Google can be misleading. Results in positions from 4 and below can change between hours, location, device etc.
I would rather look at the number of page views, sessions or unique users. These are stil vanity metrics of course. Eventually you need to look at conversions (whatever these mean in your businness).
Backlinks still play a big role in SEO and you cannot ignore them. If all parameters are equal, the higher domain authority will determine the winner of the battle of rankings in Google results.
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Yes, I agree about vanity metrics! I still have a production backlog right now, so I'm not taking any new orders, which would be the ultimate metric, so my most important metric for now is the number of people signing up to be notified when I'm able to take new orders.
And yes, I take your point, backlinks are still important! Thanks for the response!
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Well done on getting such a good ranking without much off-site SEO. I like that you're focused on content that appeals to humans and not bots. Some people get so lost on how they should try to trick bots that they forget actual humans are reading the content and judging you.
I wonder though, are you able to tell whether people are looking for the type of globes you make, or could they possibly be looking for buying guides on not light bulbs, for instance (sometimes referred to as "globes" in my part of the world)? Maybe that is what you're offering as well? In which case great :)
Where you can, you should try to monitor the actual keywords people used to land on your page to determine whether they were the right audience. Your bounce rate can also be a good indicator. You have some good CTA's on the page, so it should be quite low if you're offering the right product to the right audience.
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Yes, good points!
I'm not too concerned about whether what people are searching for is precisely what I'm offering: 99% of the globes in my guide are other people's globes, not my own, and if I'm able to connect someone with any globemaker, that's good by me.
I'm hoping Google will be clever enough not to direct searchers of light bulbs to my guide! One enormous problem with "globe" as a search term is that at a certain time of year people are searching for "globes" meaning "Golden Globes". Again, not much I can do other than hope that Google does a good job in teasing out the difference from the context!
One day, I will do as you suggest and dig more deeply into search terms. For now, I'm just happy to have gone from being unknown to being recognized by Google.
Thanks for the ideas!
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Have you heard of the Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) method?
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No! Just looked it up. I have heard of various ways to decide which keywords to try to rank for. As my first stab at SEO content, though, I've just created what I think is relevant content, regardless of search volume. You can tell I'm an SEO amateur!
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Hey we all have to start somewhere! I highly recommend this playlist for Keyword golden ratio, It'll teach you everything you need to know about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NuPMusiq8s&list=PLTRfQ_cd-edFDM39ZcRd949txumo-bE1E
Then these youtube channels really helped me understand the basics of SEO:
Ahrefs - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWquNQV8Y0_defMKnGKrFOQ
Miles Beckler - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RZRFCrN4XKoMsy5MgJKrg
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Congrats Mark. Backlinks may not have been necessary in this particular case because the keyword doesn't seem to have a lot of search volume. According to Google Ads Planner, this keyword sees 0-10 searches a month. Because it's not a high traffic keyword, the competition too doesn't seem to have invested in backlinks (or long-form content which is another critical factor these days).
In fact, there is such low volume of competition that this Indiehackers page is currently ranking #14 for this keyword.
But this does seem like a niche with not a lot of SEO heavy competitors overall. So if you can learn and implement the SEO-best practices, you are going to quickly outrank competitors.
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Ha, yes, it is low volume! Thanks for looking it up, and I'm glad Indie Hackers is up there in the rankings, too, after only a few hours!
This is a problem with globes: it's not something people search for very much. For example, if they're looking for a gift, they'll search for gifts, not globes!
My long-term strategy is to look into affiliates, i.e. getting people with high-traffic gift web sites to feature my globes and pay them a commission.
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Awesome results, but this is where not knowing SEO can be dangerous.
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Make sure you are not seeing your site because of personalization . Google still personalizes results. See if you rank for all the terms when you do incognito mode on your browser.
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Google rewards freshness still. Are the articles fairly new? It's not uncommon to see new articles rank high for a few days/weeks and then drop off.
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We just came off 2 recent Google algorithm updates in Jan 2020. While you are ranking now, it may not have been because of your efforts if your articles are old. Meaning, you did all of this work thinking you needed no backlinks, then the update happened, then you rank, now you correlate having no backlinks = rankings. It very well could be other results got pushed down from the algo updates and you moved up, but not for what you think or correlate with. What happens with the next update comes and pushes you down? If you moved up because of that, you moved up/ranked well not because you did something right, but because others did something wrong potentially and you just "stuck around" long enough.
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We've also had a lot of recent "un-named" updates to Google serps too the last 30 days ( feb and march ) as seen here: https://moz.com/mozcast/
Feb 28th, May 3rd and May 9th are pretty telling. You would want to check to see when your articles starting ranking to see if there is a correlation with those dates potentially.
Not trying to burst your bubble on your success, but make sure you really know why before you write off link building.
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Thanks for the SEO health warnings!
- Yes, I'm aware that Google results are personalized. I did the search in a private browser window, but even this doesn't hide your IP address, so the results can still be personalized to some extent, e.g. by location. I also did the search from startpage.com, which doesn't reflect Google results precisely, but is fully anonymized, i.e. it's from a different IP address, so it's a pretty good reflection of what the world is seeing.
- The articles getting on for a year old now, but I've been updating them and adding new globemakers regularly, which I hope helps quench Google's thirst for freshness!
- & 4. Yes, for sure, I'm no SEO expert, and I'm entirely unaware of algorithm updates! I wanted to explore the path of, rather than follow every twist of an ultimately unknowable algorithm, just create good content, without doing any link building, and see what happens.
And don't worry, you're not bursting my bubble: it's great to get the benefit of your greater expertise on SEO & link building. Thanks!
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Good list of advice. To support the #1 item on the list, this guide is the fifth result for me - just under "People also ask".
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This comment was deleted 7 years ago
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Cool
I shipped my first ever wood-carved globe to a crowdfunding backer in New Zealand... about 3 months behind schedule!
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9M0beHJhIu/
Why did I choose to sell physical products? As a software developer, I could have avoided so many challenges - raising money to buy a CNC router, working out how to create and assemble a physical product, dealing with packaging, postage and customs - by making something out of bits rather than atoms.
Why? Well, three reasons:
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By working on something that's not software, I've made sure there's zero conflict of interest between this side project and my day job working at a software startup.
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By creating something that's never been made before, and requires an expensive CNC router to manufacture, I've achieved a product that's not easily replicable by others.
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I'm fascinated by the possibilities of software developers like me (and so many others on Indie Hackers) programming machines to create physical products.
It has been a long journey, but now that I've shipped my first ever wood-carved globe, it feels like it has been worth it!
If the mantra of sales is "always be closing", the mantra of marketing is surely "always be interesting".
When the ever-impressive @patwalls sent me an automated email asking me what I'm working on, I made sure that my reply was interesting.
In a few sentences, I tried to let Pat know that I have things to say that'd capture the interest of his audience... in particular those in his audience who might be considering crowdfunding.
And I tried to let him know that I'm able to communicate these things in a way that'd keep his audience's interest right to the end of the story.
The result?
My Starter Story went live today:
https://www.starterstory.com/mark-jeffery
Thanks Pat!
Do you have an example where a few well-crafted sentences in an email brought an outsized return?
goodwoodglobes brought in precisely $0 in September.
And that was precisely the plan. I didn't do any promotion at all in September, in the hope of getting zero orders. As an anti-marketing plan, it was 100% successful.
Like many IndieHackers, I have a background in software, so it's a real adjustment to sell a physical product, like a 3D wood-carved globe. I'm really good at writing software in next-to-no-time with zero capital. A physical product? Well, that takes a little longer, and it requires capital.
To get myself started, I needed to raise that capital, which I did through crowdfunding on Indiegogo. As rewards, I promised my backers 3D wood-carved maps, which I've delivered, and 3D wood-carved globes, which I'm working on.
That's right: goodwoodglobes is a globemaking company, but I've never made a globe.
I could have continued to seek orders and deliver the maps, but that would leave me with no time for product development. Instead, I've deliberately turned off demand for the low-margin maps, to focus on the higher-margin globes.
Here's to maintaining zero monthly revenue in October and November, too, so that I can deliver the first globes by the end of November, just as I promised my backers!
Wow, that was a long haul!
Do you have any tips on how I might get more?
I thought Instagram would be a great platform for my 3D maps & globes because they're so visual. I've been putting a lot of effort into making my posts look great, using a variety of hash tags and being active in commenting on other people's posts. My followers are awesome: my posts routinely get 20 - 60 likes, not bad for only 200 followers.
Check out my feed @goodwoodglobes
https://www.instagram.com/goodwoodglobes/
and let me know if you have any hints for me!
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Spending 1 - 2 hours religiously everyday commenting, liking and following is a sure way to gradually increase it
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That sounds like great advice, thanks @rabbitsfoot8! How carefully do you target your comments, likes & follows? Spray & pray? or narrowly focus on your potential audience?
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You're welcome :) I tend not to target too narrowly but followers of other accounts that are similar to yours are a good start
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago
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Wow, that's an awesome reply, a whole Instagram marketing course! Thanks for pushing through the finger fatigue, @joebloom!
I hear you, mixing up the content, and especially video, would help. I had more videos earlier in my feed, including subtitled clips from my Indiegogo campaign video. You're right, I need more, and if I can get it from my customers, all the better.
Your questions are good ones. Yes, direct traffic to my web site, and ultimately orders, is the goal. Yes, my product is of interest to hikers, mountaineers, travellers – and based on my experience so far, I'd add cartographers and brides/grooms-to-be. I'll double down on finding these people in the ways you suggest.
I really appreciate your detailed response. I will be working on this! Best of luck with Bali Buzz: it's looking awesome!
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago
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This is a major milestone for me: I've shipped all the 3D maps ordered by contributors to my Indiegogo campaign.
Why does it matter? (i) It shows that I'm able to meet the promises I've made to my backers (ii) The 3D maps proved every bit as beautiful as I'd anticipated https://goodwoodglobes.com/map/canada/mount-robson.php (iii) My customers are telling me how much they love their 3D maps, and are happy for me to quote them on my wesite https://goodwoodglobes.com/
What have I learnt? (i) Things always take longer than I imagine (though as a software developer, I already knew that!) (ii) People are more supportive than I ever imagined possible
What's next? Globes!
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Amazing to see your program on new platforms. I'm running a project of best CNC software review for wooding script and it's working well.
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Congrats! That is awesome. What is next?
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Thanks Josh! I'm now writing the software to generate 3D models of the pieces of the globes. There are many challenges in moving from the maps (2D + elevation) to the globes (fully 3D). It's good to be getting down to solving them!
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